Hitchhikers
by Aebhel
Summary: Sam and Dean, and some ugly facts about life on the run. Pre-series, more or less.


A/N: I may take this down in the morning. Gratuitous angst-fest, mostly pre-series.

Wisconson, 1994.

The guy's thirty-ish, balding, and reeks of stale beer, and it's a tight fit with the three of them in his little rustbucket Toyota. Dean makes him sit in the back. Sam tries to argue--mostly for form's sake, although sometimes he can score the front seat by virtue of shooting up six inches over the past six months--and Dean just shoves him in and slams the door. Sam's nearly as tall, now, but he can't yet match his brother's bulk of muscle.

The guy starts the engine and turns around to grin at Sam in a way that makes him feel vaguely queasy. "Hi. I'm Jason."

"Just drive, man," Dean says in a voice that falls about ten miles short of nonchalant.

Jason turns his grin on Dean, pats Dean's denim-clad knee with one puffy white hand, and puts the car in reverse.

For thirty minutes of highway there's silence, dead silence, the kind that Sam associates with monsters and mayhem and trips to the hospital. Dean's weirdly tense, staring out the window with his brow furrowed, and Sam can't seem to find a comfortable way to arrange his long legs in the cramped backseat. Jason keeps looking over at Dean and smiling in a way that makes Sam think of slimy things that you find under rocks.

Five minutes after they pass the sign for Chippewa Falls, he pulls out a battered pack of Marlboro Reds from his shirt pocket and offers one to Dean. Dean stares at it for a second like it might bite him, then takes it, lights up, and rolls down the window. Jason catches Sam's eyes in the rearview mirror.

"Hey, you want one, kid?"

"Don't you fucking talk to him," Dean snarls before Sam can get his mouth more than halfway open. Startled, Sam looks over at him, and Dean exhales smoke into the slipstream in one slow, shaky breath, and just like that Sam gets it.

* * *

They don't talk about it. Ever. Sam's pretty sure it wasn't the last time Dean hustled for a ride, but now they've got the Impala and those days are in the past.

The closest he comes to bringing it up is a few weeks after Jess's death, when he's still feeling achy and raw and all those old buried bones are close to the surface. Dean applies beer and porn in a clumsy attempt at comfort that's almost as annoying as it is touching, and it's after five drinks at some dive bar out in West Bumfuck, Iowa that they get to talking about the old jobs.

"--you remember that water-demon out on Wissota, right? Dad took the car and we had to hitchhike the whole way out there, remember?"

"Yeah," Sam slurs. "And I remember what's-his-face--"

Dean downs the rest of his beer in one gulp, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, laughs. "The hell you talking about, man?"

"You know, that--" Sam gestures extravagantly with his beer and spills a generous slop of it on the sleeve of his shirt.

"I cannot believe a brother of mine is such a lightweight," Dean interjects, rescuing the beer and taking a swallow before setting it down on the scarred wooden tabletop.

"--that creep," Sam finishes. "In the Toyota."

Dean laughs again, but it sounds forced this time and his hands are resting on the tabletop, fingers curled inward. "Sammy, I gotta tell you, I don't know what you're talking about."

"Come on, you remember. Jason something." The laughter's still there, caught in the back of his throat, but there's something cold coiling in the pit of his stomach, and suddenly he's looking at Dean but he's not seeing his cocky big brother in the stolen leather jacket, sitting across the booth like a Trickster god with chaos caught in each hand, grinning. Suddenly, he's seeing Dean at sixteen, half-grown and skinny with a patchy beard coming in, brushing his teeth for ten minutes in that cheap motel room they scammed in Chippewa Falls. Dean at that rest stop, counting their cash and disappearing for an hour and coming back to say he got them a ride. Dean sitting in Jason's car with Jason's big, fleshy hand on his leg, telling Jason not to fucking talk to Sam.

Suddenly, he's seeing Dean looking wounded and defensive, a little like he's seen a ghost and a lot like Sam just slapped him across the face, and he doesn't want to know anymore. "Dean--"

"Whatever, dude." Dean slaps his hand against the table; Sam's eyes follow the motion and when he looks back up Dean's smirk is firmly in place. "I'm gonna get another beer. You want one?"

"Yeah," Sam says. He doesn't bring it up again.


End file.
